Indira's Bang

How Indira Gandhi secured the borders, ended food import, before going for the test

- R. PRASANNAN

When she came to power in 1966, Indira Gandhi found India strategically boxed in. To the west and east were two wings of US-armed Pakistan, which had slapped a costly war on India a few months earlier. To the north was the Chinese dragon that had snatched away huge chunks of territory in the 1962 war. In the south, Sri Lanka was indifferent and often flirting with the western powers who were arming Pakistan. Further south in the deep ocean, the British and the Americans were talking of building a military base in Diego Garcia. In short, India saw only hostile elements on all sides—in the west, east, north and south. The Soviets were friendly, but were cold and distant.

Indira took three steps to break out of the box. The first was taken in the course of pursuing the second. The third came three years later. We will look at them one by one.

By mid-1971, it was clear that India and Pakistan were drifting towards a war over Pakistan’s handling of its eastern wing. The military regime based in the west had held an election but, advised by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of the Pakistan People’s Party, it refused to acknowledge that the east-based Awami League of Mujibur Rahman had won the majority seats in parliament. The east revolted, the military regime sent troops to quell the unrest, and refugees poured into India in millions.

As war clouds gathered over the horizon, Indira grabbed a two-year-old offer of a loose friendship treaty from the USSR, and signed it in August 1971. As war with Pakistan broke out in December, and American warships steamed into the Bay of Bengal ostensibly to aid Pakistan, she invoked the treaty to get Moscow to tail them with nuclear submarines. Anyway, in 13 days, she won the war, and eliminated the threat from the east.